Thunderpick's North America Series 1 qualifier starts today

Back in June, gambling entity Thunderpick announced a $600,000 World Championship set to take place over the course of the next few months with the finals set to take place in November 2023.

With the prizepool being paid out in Bitcoin, Thunderpick is looking to award $100,000 to teams across four qualifiers, with $500,000 set aside for the main tournament that takes place later in the fall. With $20,000 and $5,000 up for grabs for first and second place, respectively, this event has unsurprisingly drawn significant interest from the North American community. By comparison, ESEA's most recent weekend Cash Cup featured the same prizepool ratio between the top two teams, but offered just 20% of what Thunderpick has to offer, not only once, but twice.

There are two qualifiers in North America and two qualifiers in Europe. The first qualifier is set to begin this morning with Fluffy Aimers taking on Detonate at 11:00AM, much to the annoyance of several members in North America, criticizing the time choice.

With the majority of the North American scene attending school or having summer jobs, the timing of matches throughout the day is causing some frustration.

With Bobby "stamina" Eitrem explaining that is is "not okay" to force non-salaried teams to play in a qualifier so early in the morning. He suggested that at the earliest, qualifiers or matches could be held at 04:00PM or 05:00PM.

Matches for the next two days are spread out by three-hour differences, adequate time to ensure that the single-elimination, best-of-three games will be finished in time for the subsequent series. The first game of the day is scheduled to begin at 11:00AM and the last match begins at 08:00PM.

Notable teams participating in today's qualifier include Reason, Evil Geniuses Gold, Mythic, and timbermen.